Anonymous Giving

Some donors may choose to give anonymously — such as through a private foundation or upon request — for many reasons, including:

  • To keep their wealth profile modest and avoid solicitations from other organizations.

  • To support deeply-held religious or controversial causes without public scrutiny.

  • To focus the limelight on your organization's mission rather than their giving.

For accurate tax records, we recommend you track a constituent's anonymous gifts as you do their public giving. However, for positive relationships with constituents, you should mark any anonymous donors or gifts to help ensure their anonymity.

If a donor gives specific gifts to your organization anonymously, you can select Mark gift as anonymous when you add the gift in the web view. After adding a gift, you can only edit the amount given, split gift information, soft credits, and fundraising credits.

To help respect a donor's wishes, you can identify in the web view when a gift was given anonymously.

  • On the gift's record, Anonymous appears at the top.

  • In a gift list, 'Anonymous' appears under the donor's name in the Constituent column.

  • In an exported gift list, the Is anonymous column indicates whether a gift is given anonymously.

If a donor requests to always give to your organization anonymously, select Mark as, Gives anonymously on their record. When you mark a constituent as an anonymous donor:

  • Gives anonymously appears at the top of their record in the web view.

  • Gift is anonymous or Mark gift as anonymous is automatically selected when you add their gifts in the database or web view.

To remove the Gives anonymously status from a constituent, such as if you marked them in error, select Mark as, Does not give anonymously on their constituent record.

Tip: Don't know the identity of some of your donors? Consider a constituent record with a last name of Anonymous to associate with gifts from unknown donors. If you know the source of gifts, such as a donation jar or offering plate, soft credit the store or church where you collected them to help when you analyze giving.